We can rebuild him - Steve Austin in the world of industry 4.0

If your old enough to remember Steve Austin the Six Million Dollar Man, then you were around at the beginning of the digital revolution. Industry 3.0 is the the event which signaled the advent of commoditized digital with connected mass process driven technology that would support the rise of globalization and enable the Fortune 1,000 to rapidly optimize operating models and allow for the birth of todays Industry 4.0 Tech giants.

So what's the point of this blog ?

To explain that #Digital is a legacy concept.......

"How so ?" you ask, when SAP and the top table consultancies constantly message "now is the time to embrace Digital....."

Digital has been and gone, it was industry 3.0 from the early 1970s with SAP R1 through to 2010 with SAP ECC6, it was established via SOA the technology approach that enabled an integrated operating model sitting on a digital core (The modern Enterprise architecture we know today with process and data are its core).

But digital has passed, all enterprises from Medium size tier 3s through to the global Fortune 1,000 are on some form of digital back bone, In short they are already digitalized.

The reason organizations were able to mitigate COVID was because the global economy led by the Fortune 1,000 had already moved into the realm of Industry 4.0, organizations leveraged their I4.0 augmented digital core and used tactical bolt on solutions to mitigate the immediate impact of the virus, real time continuity planning through plug and play tech augmentation to deliver new connected and in some instances intelligent operating model's.

What you see today is the connected intelligent enterprise economy

The Connected wrapper can be applied around the digital core; it doesn’t require you to rip out your old tech, it doesn’t mean move to a new SAP HANA ERP solution. Because if you do you will waste 2 years and get little tangible benefit, you'll waste your time and capital because SAP and its partners have not until now (*Accenture are the first) invest in RPA and ML to facilitate a seamless technical migration. Connected means the ability to connect all things in the enterprise eco-system whether customers, vendors or devices, the key to this will be micro services and plug and play messaging such as #pubsub and a platform such as Azure / Google Cloud / AWS to deliver big data as a service.

The Intelligent wrapper is the application of Robotic process automation and machine learning to processes and data leveraging commoditized tools such as SAP Cloud platform or the cognitive services being offered by the platform hyper scalers. But don't worry the new layers of automation and use of Artificial Intelligence will create jobs as the current Industry 3.0 enterprise is already people and process optimized, Connected Intelligence will open up new markets and employment opportunities.

A call to Arms..........

I advocate a connected intelligence wrapper which adopts a hybrid agile approach too leveraging the best plug and play Industry 4.0 solutions which add immediate tangible benefit to your operating model (plug and play connectivity):

Within months not years.....

Todays organizations already have the building blocks to embrace Industry 4.0 successfully but many don't know that's the case, instead of sweating tech assets (digital up-cycling) CFOs run the risk of investing in the run tech that will add little if any return on investment.

Todays organization's and their investors want a rapid return on investment, delivery needs to be accelerated and agile;

Lessons have to be learnt from the transformation failures of the past, $2 out of every $3 investment in technology innovation is wasted, (I'm not using the word digital) 70% of programmes fail and of those that don't only 7% achieve a ROI greater than break even.

So lets get back to Steve Austin, we will rebuild him, and just like they did in the TV show not from scratch, instead lets up-cycle the bits of him that still work and augment the gaps, and that's the hybrid approach organizations need to follow.

Below is an example of a hybrid connected intelligence approach:

I have developed a hybrid delivery methodology, I call it my "CI playbook for T2's, it takes the best of design, delivery and change management methodologies to ensure from day one the expected outcomes of the business are managed and delivered....

It focuses on rapid benefit realization and sweating existing tech assets.......

In short the guide the surgeons would use to rebuild Steve.

For further information just give me a call.......